"Less money for everyone means more money to go around. Maybe the cantina could be extended to include a cinema!
Generally though, the boss(es) are the one(s) that should be making less money, not the workers."

Ideally though, noone should have to worry about money. Ideally it should be abandoned as a means of bargainingship.

Just to clarify, bosses are also workers. And there are different groups of workers. Typically those earning in the higher reaches tend to start on earning more and then just keep on earning more and more and more. This is clearly wrong.
But what this video shows more than anything is that it is time that money was abandoned as an incentive altogether.
That is very much in line with Marx' thinking.

Hoboben If you or me really did live in a country where there really was equal opportunity to succeed, I would be much more in favour.

It's not perfectly fair, but it's a lot fairer than you'd think. Rich people are rich because they are smart and because they are doers. The free market in America allows anyone to start and run a business. I'm tired of people thinking they can't be successful. You can, you just have to figure it out. Nobody is going to hand it to you.

Afr0 Ideally though, noone should have to worry about money.

This is incredibly unrealistic. Even if everyone were paid the same, people would still be unhappy. You'd start to hear things like "I work harder than John, I should make more". This is a battle you can never win.

The better thing to do would be to remove money altogether, so that services could get traded for objects and vice versa. It would be very effective in getting to the core of the real value of services and objects, and you wouldn't be able to speculate on the value of things.

There are two parts to your taxation argument. I fully agree that big corporations should pay an equal share, not much less. I'd expect Stealth probably agrees with this too.

The other is of course about if more pay == higher rate of tax, and I personally support this. The issue I have is the idea of 50%, and higher, tax rates. The idea that half of your earnings should be removed, simply because you have managed to build a better earning?

Afr0 The better thing to do would be to remove money altogether, so that services could get traded for objects and vice versa.

The world used to be like this. It was chaos. Money is simply a generic way to represent labor. Trading labor directly is a terrible idea. You want an apple, but the guy selling them only wants oranges. What do you do? This is what money solves.

Afr0 The solution to this problem is simple: Don't earn enough to get your tax rates that high!

It's odd that you complain about how the rich are screwing over the poor while you simultaneously talk about stealing money from them (through excessive taxation). You're being just as bad as them by saying that. Why should they have to pay a higher rate of tax than you? If it were fair, everyone would pay the same proportionate amount of their income.

Nevertheless, I don't think very many people would want to live in a world you're describing Afr0. Superimposing equality on every citizen is the opposite of freedom. Most people enjoy the fact that they can make more money if they so desire. It's a huge motivation for people.

It's also not that big of a motivation for some. I know plenty of coders who now work for banks, and although they earn a tonne of cash doing so they also hate the fact that they literally work 9 till 9, six days a week (yes, they really do work 72 hour weeks).

I do not agree with that attitude, it's like saying "don't be a success".

For example I'd love it if PMC became a huge success, and I'm sure we'd all be happy if Jay's games took off and he earned lots selling lots of iPhone games.

These are two really poor examples. Do you have any fucking clue how many games Jay would need to sell to end up paying 50% of his earnings in taxes?

You're being just as bad as them by saying that. Why should they have to pay a higher rate of tax than you? If it were fair, everyone would pay the same proportionate amount of their income.

The answer to this is simple: When someone who earns 100,000 USD (or any other currency) a year pays 25% of that in taxes, that has a much bigger impact on their budget than it has for someone who earns 1000,000,000 USD a year.

Edit: You could argue that 25% is 25%, but the one who earns 1000,000,000 USD is still left with a heck of a lot more money. Therefore it would be more fair if they paid, for instance, 30%, which would still leave them with a shitload of cash.

Afr0 Therefore it would be more fair if they paid, for instance, 30%, which would still leave them with a shitload of cash.

Fair - Without cheating or trying to achieve unjust advantage.

I don't think you understand what fair really means, so I've defined it. Forcing someone to pay a higher percentage of taxes, no matter how much they make, is not fair. The whole point of a percentage based tax system is to charge less to those who make less. However, once we start using different percentage rates, it's not fair.

Unjust is describing advantage. Reading it without that word makes more sense:

Fair - Without cheating or trying to achieve advantage

Fair typically means equal.

I don't care if you think the rich should pay more, but I disagree with you calling it fair. The poor are draining money from the rich by imposing all these government regulations. There will always be rich people. Just because you're not one of them doesn't mean you're being screwed, you're just not being privileged.

The money the rich have is not yours, nor are you entitled to any of it. You are not entitled to anything in this world. You are bullying the rich by forcing them to pay massive amounts more in tax. The rich already pay almost all taxes in the world. Furthermore, the poor tend to utilize more government services. The fact is, most of the governments cashflow is funded by the rich and spent by the poor. Does that sound fair?

If the world leaders weren't such greedy pigs, there would be no poor. The rich shouldn't have to pay high taxes as much as anyone else shouldn't. If the governments didn't fuck up the country so much, we wouldn't be in such a mess in the first place.

On top of all that, the UK gov should start spending the taxes they have extorted from the people on this country, instead of keep using it to fight other country's wars.

I could go on, but after seeing so much damage that was done by the Labour Party due to Tony Blair being so far up George Bush's arse, what's the fucking point?.

|edit| And I agree with Stealth on this one, fair typically does mean equal! |edit|

The poor are draining money from the rich by imposing all these government regulations. There will always be rich people. Just because you're not one of them doesn't mean you're being screwed, you're just not being privileged.

The poor doesn't impose government regulations, the government does. As for who's in government, there are typically more poor people than there are rich, which means that the poor typically have more voting power. Or at least they would have, but in the US, even this has been taken away because the rich use their money to lobby the government.

You are not entitled to anything in this world.

I'm sorry you feel that way. Thank God I live in a society where the idea that "you're not able to fend for yourself, so you are entitled to help" is still a driving force.
Unfortunately it is gradually corroding away because of greedy capitalist pigs and stupid politicians, but I will keep fighting until my dying day to make sure that they will never win.

You know Stealth, even if we all paid a flat tax rate it might end up fairer than the system that allows Rupert Murdoc's Newscorp made 10 billion USD in profit and pay negative 4.5 billion tax in the US. Your average working class person each paid 4.5 billion more in tax than Newscorp did.

This doesn't even seem like an isolated incident, either. General Electric: worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, $5.1 billion from its operations in the United States and GE claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.

The problem is, even though it is 100% terrible for the economy, governments take big handouts in exchange for these tax breaks for high earners.
It they taxed everyone by the correct amount and make it illegal to shift profits though other countries so that tax is paid in the countries that earned them the money, the world wide economy would probably be fixed in a few years.

I am in no way condoning News Corporations tax rebate-trick, but having companies making money does not hurt the economy.

For example News Corporation alone spends around $30 billion each year on wages and other costs. Pretty much all large business, including the oil giants, spend _FAR_ more then they earn. Retail chains often receive around 5% of the price of a product as profit, often less then that. This is all money which is going back into the economy.

Lets also remember that there are some perfectly legitimate reasons for companies receiving money back from the tax man, such as giving money to charity or being taxed by an incorrect amount (again, I'm not defending News Corporation). There is no 'tax loop hole' law that we can simply close; most loop holes exist due to the complexities economics.

There are some legitimate reasons, I'll grant you. Some, particularly, are essential to small businesses in their first few years of trading. But it's absolutely grotesque the way that huge multinationals can claim the same advantages.

Unfortunately I'm not an economist, and can't confidently point to specific examples (I could try, but I don't want to spread misinformation if I'm wrong on any case. Tax free loans between subsidiaries might be one example) but many of these loopholes exist due to aggressive lobbying - by News Corp especially in the US, as any attempt to close a loop hole leads to a Fox News campaign of hate and lies. To a slightly lesser extent in the UK, Murdoch's media, as has been revealed recently, also held vast political power.

Off-shore tax havens are also another problem. Do you think many small businesses or even middle class individuals can afford the lawyers to make it work? No, it's a luxury that only benefits massive corporations and the super rich. In my completely unqualified opinion, why not just tax these money transfers to other countries? Everyone else already has to pay tax when they do this.

Also, I think in the UK there is a legal distinction between tax mitigation (a legal practice) and tax avoidance (illegal), a "course of action designed to conflict with or defeat the evident intention of Parliament" Willoughby v CIR. A huge corporation paying zero, ~1%, or negative tax, I would argue should be against the official intention of UK Parliament... but it isn't, otherwise criminal charges would have been brought to Barclays, Phillip Green, and many others by now.